TOC Pages

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

GCNP Boundary: The Segments of The Line

Following passage of the Park Act of 1975, the NPS, FS, and BLM conducted a Congress-mandated study to look at the Park-worthiness of some North Side lands that we wanted, but the law had not put, in the Park, namely Kanab, Whitmore, & Parashant-Andrus Canyons and the Shivwits Plateau. The "Adjacent Lands Study", final report in Nov 1981, contains much information in support of a more complete Park (though its unsurprising conclusion was that administration should not change). The Land Ownership map in that report, figure 3 on page 12, seems particularly useful for presenting the boundary segments for discussion. Here is the somewhat amended, clean, base map:

Amended in that I added the names for Hualapai, Havasupai, and Navajo lands. The last had been ignored, so it shows as white instead of patterned. Glen Canyon NRA had also been left off (and the boundary is wrong, though it is correct on the 1974 official map, in my last entry). The shadowy line down the middle is an artifact of the Canyon's shape; most good Canyon maps are of a size that requires splitting, scanning, and then re-joining them, and I am still practising at making the join invisible.

Here is that map with the segments A through P located, followed by a list of short identifications of each segment, my agenda for this project:

AThe start, at the junction with the Paria River. Along with a comment on the river

BOn the east side of the river, boundary based on 1934 Navajo Boundary Act

CEast side of river, then south of Little Colorado; adjoining Navajo lands

Search This Blog

About Me

I saw the Canyon first in 1962, and spent much of the 1960's fighting the dams, and promoting an appropriate boundary for the national park. The 1970's were full of GC issues, dominated by the Congressional battle over changes in the GCNP boundary and the failed fight to secure Wilderness status. I rested then, until 1998, when the river access + wilderness effort led me to write "Hijacking A River: The Political History of the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon". That book was the dark side; these blog entries are aimed at more light, a celebration of the Grand Canyon and its place as an icon of our environmental consciousness into the future.